


and the last age should show your heart

by pinkcupboardwitch



Category: Shades of Magic - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Astrid is her own warning as always, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 01:25:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17673770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkcupboardwitch/pseuds/pinkcupboardwitch
Summary: Astrid appreciates broken things. In time, so does Holland.





	and the last age should show your heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muffinworry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muffinworry/gifts).



> For the prompt, "No one has a heart of stone."

“Tell me what you think of me.” The flat of the blade is cold against his cheek, but Astrid’s voice is more silvery cool yet. “The truth.”

“Bitch.” Holland’s throat and jaw works, straining to keep back the words. But the curse drags him on. “You’re an illiterate thug, you’re a brigand and a snake. You have a heart of ice. Of stone.”

Astrid surveys him a moment, then withdraws the knife. Holland sags against the frame as she crosses the room to the rack of the twins’ toys.

When she turns back around, the tool she’s holding isn’t what he’d expected at all.

A gauntlet. No spikes or elaborate rings. Nothing but almost a full kilogram of solid, gleaming metal.

“No one has a heart of stone,” she reproves. “A stone heart would never know guilt or fear, true. But it would never know joy either. And, my dear.” Astrid draws back her mailed fist and smiles. “Seeing you like this does give me such joy.”

* * *

Years later, a new king kneels in the rubble of a ruined courtyard. The sky above is bluer than he has ever seen it, bluer than a woman’s eye, but he is looking at the ground. One hand sorts among the debris. The other holds a motley assortment of shards.

Half of a high-bridged nose. Part of a braid. A high cheekbone. A stone tongue.

He turns over an oddly curved bit of stone, larger than the others, and sits back on his heels as he recognizes it.

There, the curve of sternum. Smoothly beside it, the inside of a breast. Beneath it all, something that might have once been part of a stone heart - aorta, atria, ventricles, all small as a fist - nestled between stone lungs.

He can hold it in his hand.

For the first time since he returned to London, Holland smiles.


End file.
